High Performance Gaming on a Budget: Athlon II vs. Phenom II vs. Q9550S

X3-Terran Conflict

X3:Terran Conflict (X3:TC) is another beautiful stand-alone benchmark that runs multiple tests and will really strain a lot of video cards. X3:TC is a space trading and combat simulator from Egosoft and is the most recent of their X-series of computer games. X3:TC is a standalone expansion of X3: Reunion, based in the same universe and on the same engine. It complements the story of previous games in the X-Universe and especially continues the events after the end of X3: Reunion.

Compared to Reunion, Terran Conflict features a larger universe, more ships, and of course, new missions. The X-Universe is huge. The Terran faction was added with their own set of technology including powerful ships and stations. Many new weapons systems were developed for the expansion and it has generally received good reviews. It has a rather steep learning curve.

First at 1920×1200 with the HD 4870-X2:

Now with our GTX 280 at 1920×1200:

X3:Terran Conflict at 1680×1050, first with the HD 4870-X2:

And now at 1650×1080 with our GTX 280:

There is no reason to be dissatisfied with any of the configurations that we tested, except at the minimums which only varies between 12-21 FPS for all of them.  Playing with the HD 4870-X2, we prefer the fastest clock speed possible from any CPU although the Athlon II lags behind the Phenom II which trades blows with and sometimes surpasses our Q9550S.  With the GTX 280, we would generally prefer our Intel CPU if at the same clocks as the AMD CPUs.